In general, deterministic networking attempts to precisely control when a data packet arrives at its destination. This category of networking has seen increased interest in a myriad of applications such as industrial automation, vehicle control systems, and other systems that require the precise delivery of control commands to a controlled device. One such deterministic protocol is Deterministic Ethernet, which promises no packet loss and reduced jitter for time sensitive traffic. This is accomplished through careful ad-hoc scheduling of streams that is mostly done off-line and often enforces some constraints to streams.
Because of the time sensitivity and zero packet loss constraints in Deterministic Ethernet, each network node has to be synced with a main clock and bridges have to follow a specific scheduling. Usually an entity called a path computation element (PCE) that knows the network topology, the constraints of the networks, and the requirements of the data streams, is in charge of defining the path and the scheduling algorithm for each node of the network. Among all these constraints, scheduling network traffic in Deterministic Ethernet applications is simplified somewhat because data streams are periodic, thereby allowing stream scheduling to be solved within one time period.
Jitter control is paramount in deterministic applications and can make or break a possible traffic schedule. In Deterministic Ethernet and other deterministic networking applications, delay sensitive flows can only be scheduled if a very well controlled jitter is possible. However, developing new scheduling techniques that reduce jitter in deterministic networks is both challenging and difficult.